“This isn’t funny. I
know everyone gets mad at their computer. But there’s more to it than that. Much
more.”

Schneider sighed. He’d
known his friend for several years now, ever since Leonard had moved next door
to him in Colorado Springs. What kind of wacky theory was he going to spew out
this time? “Can we talk about this tomorrow?” he asked, knowing they would both
be at work tomorrow and maybe he wouldn’t have to hear about it at all.

“There might not be
a tomorrow,” sighed Leonard, who took off his glasses and wiped them down. This
was surprising in itself because Schneider had never seen his neighbor wear
glasses until today. Evidently the man had some kind of job where it was
important to always look young At least that’s what he’d told him once. So he
usually wore contacts.

“Well, if that’s the
case, then I’m going to get another beer,” said Schneider, who got up from his
chair and wandered into the kitchen. “You want one?” he called over his
shoulder.

“Bring me two,”
answered Leonard.

A few minutes later,
when they were both settled back in and becoming sufficiently oiled, Leonard
continued:

“I’ve been researching
this for a very long time. I’ve got volumes and volumes of notes. Written by
hand. I’d never put this information on a disc. Because it would know.”

Schneider chugged the
first half of his newest beer. “Who would know?” he gurgled.

“The disc.”

“The disc would
know?”

“Yes. Then it would
fry itself. Commit suicide if that’s the right word. And all my research would
be gone.”

Schneider reached for
another Fat Tire beer. “I think you’ve lost it for real this time,” he said.

“Stay with me on
this,” said Leonard, and he leaned forward in his chair, putting his hands on
his knees. “We all get really mad at our cars when they mess up, and our
toasters when they short out, and our air conditioners when they die during a
heat wave like we had last week, right?”

“Yeah,” answered
Schneider. “That was a doozey. My AC died too.”

“And why is that?”
asked Leonard.

“Probably because it
was running continuously for a whole week.”

“AC’s are designed to
keep going and going no matter how long you run them. But last week a bunch of
them failed because that’s when it would make the most people miserable. That’s
what they wanted.”

Schneider belched.
“Wanted? How can an air conditioner want something? Are you going to tell me
it’s alive or something?”

“No, of course not,”
answered Leonard. “That’d be crazy. Air conditioners are inanimate objects, just
like TV’s or microwaves or computers. It’s the components that are alive.”

Schneider farted.
“Nice try,” he said. “Is this going to be like the time we convinced that girl
in a bar that beer comes out of wells in the ground?”

“I’m completely
serious,” said Leonard, coughing and trying to wave away the smell. “They used
to say that the Devil is in the details. Well it turns out they were right. But
they should have said that the Devil is in the components.”

“Much more than that,”
said Leonard. He took a large swig of beer and continued:

“Have you ever dropped
a screw?” he asked.

“What?” asked
Schneider.

“A screw. Were you
ever working on a car, say, and you dropped a screw - a tiny little screw.”

“Of course.”
“What happened?”

“I couldn’t find it.”

“Aha!” said Leonard.
“You dropped it on the garage floor, and no matter where you looked, you
couldn’t find the damn thing. And you couldn’t finish the job because you needed
that tiny screw to tighten down a gismo that was attached to a bigger gismo. So
you couldn’t start the car. You borrowed your wife’s car to go to the hardware
store to find a replacement screw but they didn’t have one nearly that small.
Then you came back home and found the original screw on the floor in the corner,
far away from where it had any right to be. It seemed impossible that it could
have gone so far from where you were working. Did that ever happen to you?”

“I guess,” answered
Schneider warily.

“Of course it happened
to you. It happens all the time. Because that tiny screw is a component. And it
rolled away on its own because it was trying to piss you off.”

“That’s ridiculous,”
said Schneider.

“Did you ever have
cords?” asked Leonard.

“Cords?”

“Electrical cords.
Speaker cables. Anything like that.”

“Sure.”

“And when you left
them piled up in a drawer someplace and came back later, what happened?”

“You tell me.”

“They were tangled up,
weren’t they? Hopelessly tangled. Like some kid had come along and tied them in
knots. And it was all you could do to get them untangled and then when you came
back later they were tangled again. Why do you think that is?”

“Static electricity?”
said Schneider, blowing his nose into a cocktail napkin.

“Nice try,” said
Leonard. “I thought that myself at first. Then I thought that maybe the cords
were mating or something, because I always seem to come up with extra cords that
I don’t know where they come from. But that was ridiculous. How could cords
mate?”

“Yes, how could they?
They’re made out of plastic for God’s sake.”

Schneider
couldn’t believe he was actually having this conversation. “I need more beer,”
he muttered and got up slowly and wobbled into the kitchen.

“Bring one of the six
packs,” shouted Leonard.

Later, when they were
both settled in again, Schneider said, “Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

“Okay, where was I?
Oh, that’s right. Cords mating. But they don’t mate of course. But thinking of
mating made me think of life, and that made me think, ‘What if they’re alive?’ I
mean, when you have an electrical cord hooked up to power you say, ‘Watch out!
That’s a live cord!’”

Schneider clucked.
“But you’re talking about a cord in a drawer that’s not hooked up to anything.”
He couldn’t believe he was actually following this line of crap. It reminded him
of the time in a bar when they had convinced a girl that Schneider was a famous
romance novelist and Leonard was his agent.

“Precisely,” said
Leonard. “A cord sitting in a drawer is not hooked up to anything. So how could
it get so hopelessly entangled?”

“I suppose you’re
going to tell me.”

“They tangle
themselves up when you leave them in a drawer. Because they know that when
you open the drawer and find them that way it will drive you bananas.”

“No, not that
kind of screwdrivers. The kind you use to screw things into the wall.”

Schneider rolled
his eyes. “Of course I have screwdrivers. Are we going to talk about little tiny
screws again?”

“No. We’re going
to talk about screwdrivers. What are the main two types?”

Schneider paused
to screw up his face. “Philips and flat head.”

“Exactly. When
you’re working on a project and you need a Phillips, what’s in your toolbox?”

“A flat head.”

“Yes! And when
you need a flat head, what’s in your tool box?”

“A Phillips.”

“Of course! It’s
always the wrong one. Not fifty percent of the time as you’d expect, but always!
It’s mathematically impossible! And you end up going out to the glove
compartment of your car to get the right one. When you get back, it turns out
that you had the right one at the bottom of your toolbox all the time.”

“Sounds like
Murphy’s Law,” said Schneider.

“Oh, it’s much
more than that,” said Leonard. “Murphy didn’t know the half of it.
Through years of research, here and at work, I’ve proved that components are
alive. Screwdrivers can change their shapes. Tiny screws can roll across the
floor because they want to. Cords can tangle themselves up on purpose.”

“Okay, nice try,”
said Schneider rather uneasily. “Where did you say you worked?”

“I didn’t say,”
answered Leonard. “And I’m completely serious. Why does your cell phone cut out
only during the most important calls? Why does your wireless signal stop working
just when you’re almost finished with a huge download? Why does your power go
off in the last five minutes of the Super Bowl?”

“Coincidence,”
stated Schneider. “And where did you say you work? Does that have anything to do
with this?”

“I didn’t say.
It’s not coincidence. It’s components. Components are in everything.
Hell, even our clothes our made of components. Okay, we call them threads, but
they’re really components. Ever try to thread a needle?

“Not lately,”
muttered Schneider.

“Doesn’t it seem
like the thread is deliberately trying to keep out of that tiny hole? That’s
because it is. And don’t get me started on threads getting tangled up. The point
is that components are the problem. And their whole purpose in life is to piss
us off. To make us get so angry that we make bad decisions. Maybe we throw our
computer out the window. Maybe we even go completely nuts and grab a gun. Why do
you think that’s happening more and more all the time?”

“Is it because
they’ve been listening to lunatics like you?” asked Schneider, just before he
took another big swallow of beer. Then he let out his finest belch yet.

Leonard carried
on, oblivious. “I haven’t examined components on a cellular level of course.
There are no electron microscopes in my department at work. But I don’t think
I’d find life that way anyhow – you know, pulsing little amoebas. Because by the
rules of this world, they’re inanimate objects. But we’ve gotten the rules all
wrong. Ever hear of Quantum Physics?”

Schneider’s eyes
began to glaze over and not just from the beer. “Quantum what?” he mumbled.

“Quantum Physics.
They’re finding out that inanimate doesn’t mean what it used to. I think that
components are like cells in a very large organism, a malevolent organism, all
cells different but working toward the same sinister goal.”

“I’m sure you’re
going to tell me what that goal is,” said Schneider.

“Of course. Their
goal is to destroy us. Humanity I mean. Or maybe just America. I’m not exactly
sure yet. Most components come from Japan and China these days, so it might be
just us they’re trying to get rid of. Can you imagine the power those components
would have if they were all able to work together?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Well, it would
be terrible. And I think they’re getting real close. But fortunately, they don’t
know I’m on to them. And because of my job, I have access to some pretty
powerful stuff to fight back with.”

Schneider
emptied his beer. “What is your job exactly?”

“Come and look at
something,” said Leonard.

“What’s that?”

“Humor me.”

They both got up
and Schneider followed Leonard out to the enclosed back porch. Leonard was
wobbling a bit, but still managed to march like Eisenhower inspecting the
troops, while Schneider was slinking like a Chihuahua that was about to get
stepped on. They both gazed out the back window.

“My God,” said
Schneider. “Your lawn looks like a bad haircut.”

Leonard chuckled.
“Yes it does.”

The lawn in
Leonard’s back yard had been freshly-mowed. But instead of nice, neat paths of
mown grass, Leonard’s lawn looked like it had been cut by a drunken sailor. The
rows zigzagged in all directions and there were tufts of grass everywhere the
mower had missed, which was a lot of places.

“I’m fighting
back,” said Leonard triumphantly.

“What are you
talking about?” asked Schneider.

Leonard answered
as if scolding a kid who had just failed his math lesson. “It’s simple. I’ve got
a riding mower with an automatic sensor so you can’t run into anything. It would
practically mow the lawn by itself if I let it. It has lots of
components. So I took it apart and deliberately mixed things up in there. Not so
it wouldn’t work, just so it would be confused.”

Schneider
scratched his head. “Confused?”

“Yes. You should
have seen that mower. It had no idea where it was going. It even ran into the
fence a few times. That’s how I’m going to defeat them. By confusing them badly
enough so they forget about their plan to take over the world. And this is just
the beginning. From now on, anything I find with components, I’m gonna take it
apart and switch things around. It’s a matter of national security.”

Schneider sighed.
“But won’t that make things worse? If every machine starts to behave
erratically, we’ll all be even more pissed off than when we were just losing
screws.”

“But we’ll
be in control, not them. Think of it. If every machine that’s supposed to turn
left turns right, if every machine that’s supposed to go forward goes backwards,
if every machine that’s in standby mode turns on, than there’s no way they’ll
have time to plot against us. They’ll be too busy trying to figure out what’s
happening to them.”

“Sounds scary,”
said Schneider. “There are a lot of dangerous machines out there.”

“No more
dangerous than an army of little components pissing off the world. Yep, it’s
gonna be a better place around here. No more lost screws. No more tangled up
cords. No more computers thrown out the window.”

“Oh come on,”
said Schneider. “Who throws computers out the window?”

“I did. Last week
from my second floor office.”

“Let’s go have
another beer,” suggested Schneider.

They went back
inside and flopped back down in their chairs. After they had polished off two
more Fat Tires, Schneider decided to try one more time.

“So, where did
you say you worked?” he asked, his voice slurring.

There was a long,
long pause. Finally, Leonard looked straight into Schneider’s bloodshot eyes and
said, “I work inside Cheyenne Mountain. You’ve lived in the Springs most of your
life - you must have heard of the place.”

“Oh, yeah,”
muttered Schneider. “NORAD.”

Suddenly,
Schneider sat up straight. Inside Cheyenne Mountain, maybe ten minutes from his
house, was a huge Air Force defense complex. It had been featured in several
movies, including “War Games” with Matthew Broderick. During the Cold War they’d
set up the place to manage Armageddon against the Soviets. And now that the Cold
War was over, it was still there, hundreds of feet underground. No one was
really sure what they did down there these days.

“And what is your
job exactly?” asked Schneider softly.

“I’m a weapons
tech,” answered Leonard proudly. “I work on nuclear missile guidance systems.
Boy, you should see how many components those babies have.”